


We'll Always Have the Rammas Echor

by Eleutherios



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Battle of Osgiliath, Battle of the Causeway Forts, Gen, M/M, Pelennor Fields, Self-Insert, War of the Ring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-28
Updated: 2013-08-28
Packaged: 2017-12-24 22:02:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/945150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eleutherios/pseuds/Eleutherios
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A visitor sets the story straight.</p><p>"Kungfooqueen on LJ did a meme where she advised people to draw or write a shameless Mary Sue self-insertion fic."  Copperbadge did his.  This is mine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We'll Always Have the Rammas Echor

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Because I Can](https://archiveofourown.org/works/933260) by [copperbadge](https://archiveofourown.org/users/copperbadge/pseuds/copperbadge). 



I opened my eyes.

The first thing I saw was black stone, and I looked up at the enormous wall that stood in front of me.  It rose to a dizzying height, and I reached out and placed my hand flat against it.  It was cool and smooth, stretching out into the interminable distance to either side.

‘Oh my God,’ I breathed, enchanted.  ‘Oh my God, it worked!’

Then I registered that it was dawn and I was standing at the Rammas Echor.

‘ _I’m nearly five miles away!_ ’ I screamed at the sky.  ‘ _You sent me to the fucking Rammas Echor!_ ’

I turned and began to run.

 

The battle was going badly.  Two of the causeway forts had been overrun, the defenders falling back to the third where Faramir and the soldiers of Minas Tirith held the Morgul armies at bay.  For a moment at Osgiliath it had almost seemed like they were going to drive the foul host back across the river, but then black ships had sailed up the river on the east.  Orcs had come upon them unawares like a black wind that broke and scattered them like smoke.

They were being forced back, Faramir thought as he gazed down at the defenders in the courtyard through the tower chamber’s arrow slit.  He had not the strength to muster much emotion at the thought.  He ached, a hot, deep, in-the-bone ache of absolute exhaustion.  The heady rush of battle was fading fast, and the things he could ignore or brush off an hour ago were clamouring for attention.  The smell of blood.  The pain of a jarred wrist.  The dull, stiff throb that told him he would be spectacularly bruised under his mail and surcoat.  Faramir longed to sit down, but how could he take even a moment to rest while the air rang with screams and the guttural roars of orcs?

They held this fort.  No matter what.  Losing it meant that the Morgul hosts would be free to march right up the Causeway to the Rammas Echor and then to rampage across the Pelennor to the Citadel itself.  Faramir would be dead before he saw that happen.  Not a single step of land would be given up until it was soaked in blood.

He was just so _tired_.

‘Aranur, see that the wounded are brought to the kitchens,’ he said wearily, passing a hand over his face.  ‘There is a servants’ entrance there you can use to get them out if the fort falls.’  Aranur’s eyebrows went up and Faramir cursed himself; surely he wasn’t so far gone that he was letting morale slip.  ‘I will take half the men here to the courtyard and relieve the –’

A hideous shriek split the air, a sound that made Faramir want to go running to hide in the cupboards.  It was every nightmare monster and phantasm, every childhood story that had ever sent him to bed with cold sweats and a racing heart.  It sent a thrill of pure terror through him like a cold spike from his gut right up into his brain.

‘Nazgul,’ he breathed, and broke into a run.  He ran down the tower stairs, taking them three and four at a time, fitting an arrow to his bow as he went.  Bursting into the courtyard, he loosed it at the dark shape wheeling overhead.  ‘Fall back!’ he bellowed.  ‘Back to the city!  Fall back!’  They could hardly hear him over the din of battle, for orcs were storming the courtyard in their hundreds, but they barely needed to – everyone fled before the Nazgul.

The monster aloft screamed and Faramir fired another arrow as all around him men cowered and fled.  It pierced the fell beast’s leathery wing and it gave a hoarse, shrieking cry as it faltered and began to come down.  Faramir dropped his bow and drew his sword as the beast came down on the roof of the stables, claws scrabbling for purchase.  The Nazgul rose over it, a shapeless shrouded figure silhouetted against the pale clouds in the east, a horror in black.

‘ _The White Tower!_ ’ he bellowed as he raised his sword in defiance, as much to bolster his own failing courage as a challenge.  ‘ _Gondor and the White Tower!_ ’

He saw it too late, the gleaming golden bow and black-feathered arrow.  He began to drop to the ground even as it punched through his shoulder.

 

Cold.  So cold.  Faramir lay in a frozen torpor and every part of him seemed filled with ice water rather than blood, so cold it burned.  He could not move.  He could not speak.  He was so very weak.  Easier to just close his eyes.  Easier to let go.

Someone was shaking him, and he could hear someone speaking in fluid Sindarin, not the common Westron most of the soldiers spoke.  He did not open his eyes.  What was the point?  He was so tired.  He just wanted to rest.

A faint, sweet smell came to his nose, pungent and herbal.  His breaths came a little more deeply.  Perhaps it was worth the effort to keep breathing, if it meant he could smell that heavenly scent a little more.  What was it?  It was like every lovely thing he had ever smelled – his mother’s perfume, the roses in the gardens at Dol Amroth, the woods of Ithilien in the summer, jasmine and honeysuckle in the gardens of the White Tower... He became a little more aware of his body, of the rough bedroll beneath him, the hard stone floor beneath that.

When he opened his eyes, he saw a strange face looking down at him.  The man was young, little more than a boy.  His dark hair was cut short a bare inch from his scalp and – this was the most curious thing – his eyes were rimmed with black, like a lady’s, and his lips were painted a dark, shining green.  He had the dark, tilted eyes and olive skin of men from the very distant east, beyond Mordor and Rhun.  Easterling envoys had come to his father when he was a boy.  He remembered them, a little – a strange, quiet, courteous people in bright silk, carrying gifts of rare spices and precious stones.  They’d spoken stilted, painfully correct Westron in a very strange, deliberate way, with curiously lilting accents, being careful with all the words they used.  Not like this strange young man, speaking Sindarin with his anxious face and familiar manner.

‘Faramir?’ he said.  ‘My lord?  Please wake up.  You must try to stay awake.  You will not live to reach the city at this rate.’

He heard someone else speaking, and the young man turned away to reply before bending over Faramir again.  ‘Aranur says that we must be ready to leave soon.  He says that you must be carried if you cannot ride, but in your state, I am not sure you would survive either journey.  My lord, please, just get up.’  He unscrewed a capsule of smelling salts he wore on a chain around his neck and held it under Faramir’s nose.  There was that heavenly scent again, and Faramir cracked open his lips.

‘Water,’ he rasped.

The man fed him a little water from his waterskin.  He was slender, but he had the healthy look of someone who had never gone hungry in his life, and the delicate look of someone who’d never had to work hard – Faramir noted that his long, thin hands were soft as a child’s as he checked the bandages on Faramir’s shoulder.

‘Let me help you,’ he said, and with his support, Faramir was able to sit upright.  They were in the main hall of one of the forts four leagues up the causeway and someone had lit a fire.  There were men sitting against the walls or standing by the windows, staring out into the plains.  They still wore their armour; clearly, they had to be ready to leave at any moment.

‘What happened?’ he asked, his voice a harsh croak.

‘The Nazgul shot you with an arrow,’ said the man in the sweetly-accented, perfect Sindarin of someone who had been raised around Elves.  ‘And then you were stricken with the Black Breath.  Your men got you out just in time.  I’ve been trying to wake you up for nearly an hour.’

‘You are a healer?’ asked Faramir.  He took the offered waterskin and drained it dry.  He felt shivery and weak, full of aches as if he had a fever.

The man laughed.  ‘Hardly.  I am simply a... traveller.  And I intend to make sure you survive your journey back to Minas Tirith, Captain.  Your lieutenant Aranur is very protective of you; it’s very sweet.  He almost stabbed me when I told him I knew who you were.’

This was making Faramir’s head swim.  ‘How did you know?’

‘Spoilers,’ said the man, smiling, which made no sense whatsoever.

Faramir lay back down with a sigh.  He felt better for the water; he didn’t feel so achingly exhausted anymore.  Now he just felt sleepy.  The cold was spreading across him again like a blanket he’d thrown off being pulled back up to his chin.

‘Faramir!  No, get up!  Please wake up!’

Faramir ignored the voice, shrill but growing increasingly distant.

Then he felt a pair of lips on his own, kissing him.  Heat exploded from the point of contact, golden, liquid fire racing down the length of his body.  In that kiss was hunger and anger and fear and _life_ , hot and fierce.  He surged forward, returning the kiss with equal passion, his fingers in the man’s hair, his body a firm line of heat against Faramir’s.  The world ceased to exist except where they touched.  His mouth tasted of something bittersweet and spicy, an exotic tang of faraway places.

After what seemed like an Age, he pulled away, leaving Faramir panting and flushed.  He felt anything but cold now; his body longed for action.  He felt like he might charge down the orcs himself.

Kisses were better than potions.

The man reached out and wiped the corner of Faramir’s mouth.  His thumb came away smeared with green from smudged lip paint.  ‘I... am going to go tell Aranur to ready the horses,’ he said, bright red in the face.  He stood, straightened his clothes rather unnecessarily, and left the hall.  The moment he was gone, Faramir was treated to whistles and lascivious remarks from the other men.

‘Haha, look at our Captain!  Always turns a situation to his advantage!’

‘If I had known that facing down Nazgul brought those kinds of rewards, I would have done it long ago.’

‘You are very welcome to try,’ said Faramir sarcastically.

 

We rode the horses to half to death in our haste to get back to the city.  The Morgul army was hot on our heels, and I knew that the kiss was a temporary measure.  Faramir nearly fell out of his saddle when we were halfway there, and by the time we got to Minas Tirith he was worse than he had been before the kiss – virtually comatose.

I watched them bear him into the city and my heart broke to see him look so pale, so lifeless.  Never mind that I knew this story – I knew that Faramir survived and became Prince of Ithilien.  Never mind that I myself had just made sure of it.  It was a familiar heartache, the ache I got whenever I thought about Faramir, son of Denethor.  That ache of pity, of desire, and of sorrow that he would never be mine.  The ache that every Lord of the Rings fan had for one character or another.

‘But at least now he’s alive,’ I murmured.  ‘One more canon saved.  And I got to kiss him, even if he probably won’t remember it.  So long, Faramir.  We’ll always have the Rammas Echor.’  I put my finger to the side of my nose, turned around thrice, and vanished.


End file.
